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Home | Writing system | Old Turkic script
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The script is named after the Orkhon Valley in Mongolia, where early 8th century inscriptions were discovered in an 1889 expedition by Nikolay Yadrintsev. These Orkhon inscriptions were published by Vasily Radlov and deciphered by the Danish philologist Vilhelm Thomsen in 1893. These inscriptions are the earliest known texts in any Altaic language. English Sinologist Andrew West, an important contributor to this article, has stated the "resemblence of some symbols to Banpo, Runic, Etruscan etc, is just coincidence", and should not be included as reference to Old Turkic script. In spite of this, it is maintained that the similarities to the angular shapes of the runic alphabet, the letters of the Orkhon script have been referred to as "Turkic runes" or described as "runiform". Examples of the Orhon-Yenisei alphabet are depicted on the reverse of the Azerbaijani 5 manat banknote issued since 2006. |
